What We Leave Behind

Mara stood in her kitchen at 2 AM, squeezing the last drops of orange juice from the carton she'd forgotten to replace. The refrigerator hummed its lonely song, illuminating the half-empty shelves where David's things used to be.

Three days since he'd walked out. Three days since she'd found the texts, the receipts, the papaya-scented shampoo bottle in his gym bag—the fruit she was allergic to, the scent he'd claimed came from the gym's complementary products.

She dumped wilted spinach into a pan, watching it steam and shrink like her dignity. Outside, the neighbor's cat yowled, a sound she'd once found charming, now just another reminder of the life they'd built together in this apartment with its peeling paint and broken dreams.

The television flickered with a baseball game from 1997. David had DVR'd it. Some nostalgia thing. She used to watch him watch it, mesmerized by how his eyes lit up when the batter connected, how he'd explain the statistics as if they were poetry, not numbers. Now the announcer's voice echoed through empty rooms, discussing players whose careers had ended before they'd met.

Her phone buzzed. A text from him: "Can we talk?"

Mara stared at the glowing screen, her thumb hovering. She thought about the papaya shampoo, the orange juice he always finished without replacing, the cat he'd threatened to adopt, the spinach he'd complained about but ate anyway because she'd cooked it.

She deleted the message, turned off the television, and scraped the spinach into the trash. Some games end when you walk away, not when the score says so.